I was wondering if there were people here that would be interested in getting an older computer system to play the DOS based computer games.... I may have access to a few older cpu's for a pretty good price..... Would anyone here want to acquire one? I have heard from many people that they wished they still had an older computer to play some adventure games on since newer computers with faster processors and Windows installed have difficulty running some games....so I was just curious....

I've been wondering along these lines a bit myself these past three or four days. Not being of a "business man" type I wouldn't have the first idea about pricing and marketing. I do, however, know we must first consider the details of what such a computer should consist of. Even at that, my past experience with "slow" games is Windows95 and a P166 CPU. Do not even remember what type of Video Card or Sound Card I used back then. Barely knew how to install a game back then, let alone know how it worked.

So......why not everyone with knowledge of the older games (my first was MYST several years ago) post their ideas of what a DOS or Windows95 type game (with a slow CPU) would require in a PC? And what you think it would be worth. Don't forget.....it cost to ship these things.

I find a lot of old used PCs for sale about a half mile from here and I've seen them range from $13 to $35 but that doesn't mean they don't need some work done on them. Naturally, they're all marked as "AS IS"! We do have one advantage in this. The guy who prepares them for sale lives across the street from me and with his help we might could get something going on this. It all depends on the demand and then what is available.

Some input on this and I'll see what can be done from here, if anything.

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I didn't do it......and if I did I'm not guilty!

Wow........ I guess these responses answer my question....... I don't have any specs on the computers right now. The person who has these cpu's is pretty computer illiterate, so I am waiting to talk to her computer guru so he can give me the specs on them.... It will probably be a couple of weeks before I find out anything, and I will post here when I do....

The only problem I see with this is the shipping fees. I looked into buying an old computer from a source in another city for about $40, but it would have costed me about another $50 to ship it to my home.

Is there such a thing as a pure DOS game machine? I mean one that you would NOT have to reconfigure for each game, could just load the CD and play? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="confused.gif" />

ahhh, Granny, there-in lies the problem. Even with just DOS, there was always some tweaking going on.

Being a DOS baby, I remember that if you didn't have a SoundBlaster card, you would have to monkey with the sound as quite a few games were optimized for SB and nothing else. Sure, sound cards claimed they could emulate SB, but the game didn't always agree. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="tongue.gif" />

He went asearching and gradually gathered all the necessary bits - making sure, of course, to bear in mind that nuisance factor..."compatability" <img border="0" title="" alt="[Cool]" src="cool.gif" />

I should now be able to play Dementia and possibly other games that won't run in anything but Win.95 And it will also come in very handy for the older DOS games that need a slower CPU.

I really recommend having an older style machine if you can possibly get one as I dare say it won't be THAT long before they, and/or the parts necessary to build one, just become totally unavailable

I just purchased a Dell Optiplex GXPro 200 for about 70.00, installed WIN 95b and have had great luck running older games like Synnergist, Shivers, Armed and Delirious and Azrael's Tear on it. This one is the last model before MMX Pentium. Has the original Pentium chip but there are OptiPlex GXPro's with the MMX Pentium chip as well. Fast enough for mid to late 90's games but strongly backwards compatible. I loaded Azrael's Tear and Alice Interactive on a very old 486 I had borrowed before buying the Dell and both games just crawled so watch out for that. You want some speed. I liked the Dell so much I bought a second one (38.00 on e-bay not including shipping) for parts. Here's a link that talks about older computers from a gamer's POV. http://www.oldskool.org/ Look on the list at the left and click on "compatiblity".

The Dell has a command that lets you slow the system from 200 mhz to 8 mhz on the fly for those times when you need a really slow CPU and don't want to stop and mess with Turbo, MoSlo or CPU Killer. Someone should buy up a pallet of those old Dell 200's and sell them to old game gamers. This has exhausted my expertise on the subject so I'll shuddup now.

Mine was a a 50Mhz and pentium upgradeable. Started out with Win 3.1 and upgraded to Win'95. Had soundblaster on it that came with a cd player. Only had 8M ram on it (started with 4)and some of the games needed 12 or 16M ram. So might want to keep that in mind. Needed to make a boot disc for many of the dos games.

As I've mentioned before, I still have my old 166MHz and can play nearly any older DOS or early Windows game. I've never had any work done on it and its still in there working nearly every day, after six years. Here are the sys specs for this loyal little gem of a machine:

There's the basic specs. I do have to tweak the sound with some older games, but have been able to play almost every older DOS/Win95 games with very few exceptions. If you can find one of these in good shape....I'd sure recommend it!

As far as value is concerned, these old machines are becoming sort of like a classic car. The value to someone who already has one, well, it is probably nearly "priceless." I wouldn't part with mine! However, the true market value is likely down in the basement!